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Fangz posted:https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research I just want to die now. 
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Nov 24, 2016 12:52
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Reading posting above, I'll reiterate for those who don't read books / perhaps know English only as a secondary language that losing NASA as a prime contractor for climate research is awful. That's something like a 15 - 20% hit to sponsored projects in higher edu on earth and atmo science with my largest client. Did I ever talk about the Bayh-Dole act, education funding, intellectual property and technology transfer / licensing in this thread? I can't keep straight which threads I've dropped an explaination in. Yes you literally cannot replace some of nasa's prime projects. I'm not even loving talking about that. One of the angles I focus on with respect to ACC is not just what's happening to Earth, but what's happening to its people. We're not funding higher education like we used to. Getting a job out of college is substantially aided by a resume with meaningful experience on it. The fix many take for both of these needs is research: study, work in a lab doing exactly the sort of thing you'd do later on in industry or academia, and have your tuition partially or fully covered. Experience, diminished loans, and eager slave labor for science comes out of a healthy university research engine. Climate change research does so much more than just peek at I haven't and won't even get into the tech transfer / Bayh persistent license side of this equation and where universities exist as places to ignore a ton of ITAR / EAR red tape for industry contacts. This is an arcane little field. The above is meandering and lacking in clear points, so I'll restate below what Trump's presidency means for one slice of my little world: 1) gently caress, losing NASA as a prime contractor on ACC vaporizes...easily as high as a fifth of the award-based funding for a department of hundreds of people, most of them students. (Actually, another of thousands of students but to a diminished fraction). God only knows what other sources will be cut, maybe if Trump literally doesn't know what the NSF is, nobody will touch it. 2) When agency funding dries up in a politically fucky climate, you need to supplement your effort with money from somewhere else or change careers. This is where cubesats come into the picture - life support with a lower barrier of entry to keep PhDs employed and graduate students learning so we loving have an American climate science field to come back to in 4-8 years. In as much that we're fighting for every 0.1C, we're fighting for every dollar right now. 3)  4) Didn't touch on this above, but that 2bil NASA climate budget extension in all likelihood wasn't going to all go to operations. Much of that is going to be flowthroughs for analysis in academia. Those can get cut, it would suck, but it would be far from the first time universities would have to foot the bill for some of their faculty while agency funding was cut in a politically lean season. Analysis will still get done. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Nov 24, 2016 |
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Nov 24, 2016 14:02
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TildeATH posted:Totally not robotic to constantly respond "We just need to redouble our efforts! This time it'll totally work, guys!" to every crushing setback. Progress is a lie. Hope is a lie. This is a war against chaos. Fight for every degree centigrade, every degree philosophique, every dollar.
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Nov 24, 2016 14:19
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I dunno if you were around for 2008 but that dumped a lot of researches in these fields into industry, i.e. intel, apple, qualcomm, defense, etc. And they don't come back because they get used to the better pay.
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Nov 24, 2016 14:19
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Arctic sea ice (extent) gained another 109,000 sq km yesterday, and 108,000 sq km the day before. The total gain in the last four days has been 516,000 sq km, or 129,000 sq km/day. This is below the 144,000 sq km/day needed to meet the 2006/2012 crossover (and previous record low) on December 7th. If it remains on its current trajectory, it will continue to break the record for the lowest extent until Christmas.
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Nov 24, 2016 15:16
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Nov 24, 2016 18:57
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I think this thread needs some upbeat stuff to counter all the negativity. Like the possibility that an alien civilization succeeded in creating megastructures around a star. Sure, we're all doomed, but maybe some other folks actually succeeded.
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Nov 24, 2016 19:07
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ShredsYouSay posted:I think this thread needs some upbeat stuff to counter all the negativity. Like the possibility that an alien civilization succeeded in creating megastructures around a star. I've been thinking about Super Villian methods of responding to Climate Change. My favorite thus far is somehow activating the Yellowstone Super Caldera. That'd stop global warming for quite a while.
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Nov 24, 2016 19:47
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Trabisnikof posted:I've been thinking about Super Villian methods of responding to Climate Change. My favorite thus far is somehow activating the Yellowstone Super Caldera. That'd stop global warming for quite a while. The real super-villain business would be Kingsman: The Secret Service-style mass depopulation of all but a specified, chosen few, or at least mass sterilization. A proper Lex Luthor-style mad scientist could sort this poo poo out in a year. "Get off fossil fuels by 2018 or I blow up the moon."
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Nov 24, 2016 22:27
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Wanderer posted:The real super-villain business would be Kingsman: The Secret Service-style mass depopulation of all but a specified, chosen few, or at least mass sterilization. A proper Lex Luthor-style mad scientist could sort this poo poo out in a year. "Get off fossil fuels by 2018 or I blow up the moon." This is the plot of Utopia and of that latest Tom Hanks film.
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Nov 24, 2016 22:32
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Wanderer posted:The real super-villain business would be Kingsman: The Secret Service-style mass depopulation of all but a specified, chosen few, or at least mass sterilization. A proper Lex Luthor-style mad scientist could sort this poo poo out in a year. "Get off fossil fuels by 2018 or I blow up the moon." Yeah but mass genocide is a potentially larger engineering challenge (except bioweapons I guess) than activating a massive volcano that will devastate North America. Some think it might be as "simple" as drilling to the mantle. Bioengineered plagues have a large mitigating potential, but unless you target humans, you'd have to engineer many many specific plagues to force humans into the land use behavior you want. Targeting humans is boring and let's be real, probably will be less effective on the higher emissions per capita populations.
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Nov 24, 2016 22:33
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Evil_Greven posted:Arctic sea ice (extent) gained another 109,000 sq km yesterday, and 108,000 sq km the day before. Just like an asteroid on a collision course with earth or a nearby supernova destroying the ozone layer, there's nothing we can do about sea ice extent over the next few years. It's clear to anybody reading this thread that the path we're on means a lot of record low sea ice levels over the next couple of decades, as well as a number of record high annual average temperatures ( 2016 will be the hottest year on record, replacing the previous record holder 2015). It's not worth worrying about things we can't possibly change. Outside this thread I don't see record low ice levels getting much traction with the general public, most likely a major city needs to flood before people demand action. The proposed NASA funding cuts has reaffirmed my view that the most productive method of mitigating climate change is ensuring progressives maintain political power at the federal level. Volunteer on climate-specific and local environmental causes if you have time, but Trump's election outweighs all the fossil fuel divestment initiatives and pipeline blockades by an order of magnitude. Preventing similar outcomes in the future should be the focus. Trabisnikof posted:I've been thinking about Super Villian methods of responding to Climate Change. My favorite thus far is somehow activating the Yellowstone Super Caldera. That'd stop global warming for quite a while. Adding that to the list of things that can destroy modern civilization and there's nothing we can do about it. edit: Keeshhound posted:Mr. Burns-style giant umbrella blocking out the sun. Has the benefit of increasing demand for artificial lighting, so we can probably get the energy lobby onboard. As the owner and manager of a nuclear power plant Mr. Burns is a firm ally in the fight against climate change and you should be careful about who you label a "super villain". Nocturtle fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Nov 24, 2016 |
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Nov 24, 2016 22:58
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Trabisnikof posted:I've been thinking about Super Villian methods of responding to Climate Change. My favorite thus far is somehow activating the Yellowstone Super Caldera. That'd stop global warming for quite a while. Mr. Burns-style giant umbrella blocking out the sun. Has the benefit of increasing demand for artificial lighting, so we can probably get the energy lobby onboard.
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Nov 24, 2016 23:00
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Trabisnikof posted:Yeah but mass genocide is a potentially larger engineering challenge (except bioweapons I guess) than activating a massive volcano that will devastate North America. Some think it might be as "simple" as drilling to the mantle. Yet another way to save the climate that would benefit from the mighty atom. Atoms for blasting the crust down to the mantle, creating a wasteland, and calling it Peace, that is.
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Nov 24, 2016 23:21
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Hollismason posted:This is the plot of Utopia and of that latest Tom Hanks film. I guess I need to see Sully again since that bit of the plot line flew right over my head...
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Nov 25, 2016 02:29
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No the one that's a sequel to The DaVinci code.
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Nov 25, 2016 02:42
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Is it possible that another great economic recession like the GFC sparked by Trump might help restrain emissions? That might be a silver lining.
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Nov 25, 2016 04:04
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Does anyone have the flashing gif of this?
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Nov 25, 2016 07:35
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So a question I have been trying to find a good answer for is: for the purpose of electricity generation alone (i.e. ignoring transportation etc.), about how much of an increase in the price of fossil fuels would be required to make them very noncompetitive compared to, for example, nuclear and/or solar? Could a sufficiently severe and prolonged shock to fossil fuel prices be reasonably expected to replace a large fraction of fossil fuel based electricity generation with non-CO2 emitting alternatives over something like a 10 year period?
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Nov 25, 2016 08:01
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Morbus posted:So a question I have been trying to find a good answer for is: for the purpose of electricity generation alone (i.e. ignoring transportation etc.), about how much of an increase in the price of fossil fuels would be required to make them very noncompetitive compared to, for example, nuclear and/or solar? This might help you out a bit (this table in particular). Lower left section of that table shows you fuel input costs per kWh. That's only maintenance, operation, and fuel costs, though, and it doesn't include initial capital costs to get the facility up and running (or teardown/waste disposal costs in the case of nuclear). You'd probably need to figure out the levelized cost of energy for different sources at different fuel rates to find a point where all fossil fuels become unprofitable, I guess, if you really wanted an answer. That said, I think the general answer is that yeah, of course there's a point where fossil fuels are too costly. We use them because they're cheap compared to the alternatives, or because it's not worth spending money on new infrastructure when the dirty infrastructure we have still works. If the cost of natural gas and coal suddenly shot through the stratosphere then we'd ditch them for whatever alternative we could get set up quickly and cheaply. Climate change is pretty much purely an economic problem, which is why solving it is so hard.
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Nov 25, 2016 08:13
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Morbus posted:So a question I have been trying to find a good answer for is: for the purpose of electricity generation alone (i.e. ignoring transportation etc.), about how much of an increase in the price of fossil fuels would be required to make them very noncompetitive compared to, for example, nuclear and/or solar? Wind already is cheaper compared to building a new plant. The problem is, if I built a coal plant 40 years ago and I've already paid off my capital costs then it's hard to make building something new cheaper. You'd probably need add +$20ish $/per MWh to fossil fuels to make building new renewables cheaper than just operating your existing coal plant and +40ish to make building nuclear cheaper than operating your existing coal plants. That's spitballing off the doe lcoe numbers https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
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Nov 25, 2016 08:17
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Banana Man posted:Lets say someone snapped their fingers and all manmade climate changing sources ended, we would still see changes toward an increasing global temp for like a hundred years anyway right? Probably more? If all human CO2 emissions ended from one minute to the next, temperatures would plummet. The ecosystem is by now set up to absorb some portion of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and without them it would suck more CO2 out of the atmosphere than is needed to maintain the current temperature. This is not a concern on any realistic timeframe, if we phase out fossil fuels over the next 50 years temperatures will continue rising for a bit, but we might even stay below the dreaded 2°C
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Nov 25, 2016 08:51
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pidan posted:If all human CO2 emissions ended from one minute to the next, temperatures would plummet. The ecosystem is by now set up to absorb some portion of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and without them it would suck more CO2 out of the atmosphere than is needed to maintain the current temperature. If by doing that we avoid activating runaway climate change through loving up the oceans, siberia exploding into a giant fart and our arctic and antarctic AC going on the fritz. But yeah, if we could phase out fossil fuels in the next 30 or so years, that would help a hell of a lot. Doubt India, Indonesia, China or most of Africa and South America would be too keen on that though. Just getting rid of coal as a starter would have just a monumental impact. Cannot be overstated how important that would be. shrike82 posted:Is it possible that another great economic recession like the GFC sparked by Trump might help restrain emissions? That might be a silver lining. The only thing positive about Trump is that he only gets to do damage for 8 years max, and after that people will hopefully be angry enough (and the progressives have gotten their poo poo together enough) that dems flood congress and get POTUS. Then we
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Nov 25, 2016 09:26
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Trabisnikof posted:Wind already is cheaper compared to building a new plant. The problem is, if I built a coal plant 40 years ago and I've already paid off my capital costs then it's hard to make building something new cheaper. You'd probably need add +$20ish $/per MWh to fossil fuels to make building new renewables cheaper than just operating your existing coal plant and +40ish to make building nuclear cheaper than operating your existing coal plants. That's spitballing off the doe lcoe numbers https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf Based on this, Paradoxish's post, most else I've read, and common sense, I think its fair to say that the fossil fuel price increase required to dramatically change the equation is less like 10x and more like 4x or even 2x, for example. For oil and gas at least, this is within the historical range of volatility that can be caused by deliberate supply shocks. Thinking particularly of the 1973 oil crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, or the more contemporary (and localized) examples of Iraqi Kurdistan, Libya, and Nigeria. I am in no way advocating this, but its no less crazy of an end-times climate change scenario than >30 billion USD/yr being spent on SRM or aerosols and that crazy poo poo gets serious discussion all the time.
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Nov 25, 2016 10:49
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Nice piece of fish posted:The only thing positive about Trump is that he only gets to do damage for 8 years max, and after that people will hopefully be angry enough (and the progressives have gotten their poo poo together enough) that dems flood congress and get POTUS. Then we And ideally we would all have coffee and donuts. Death is certain.
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Nov 25, 2016 13:53
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Good news everyonequote:Imagine a wonderful world, a planet on which there was no threat of climate breakdown, no loss of freshwater, no antibiotic resistance, no obesity crisis, no terrorism, no war. Surely, then, we would be out of major danger? Sorry. Even if everything else were miraculously fixed, we’re finished if we don’t address an issue considered so marginal and irrelevant that you can go for months without seeing it in a newspaper. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/treating-soil-like-dirt-fatal-mistake-human-life
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Nov 25, 2016 19:26
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Placid Marmot posted:Good news everyone So let me get this straight. We've got global climate change leading to sea level rises affecting millions and desertification of settled regions affecting millions more; loss of freshwater and ocean acidification; soil degradation after decades of harmful agricultural practices; and large-scale destruction of rainforest habitats leading to extinction of thousands of species.... any other major ecological disasters I should be aware of?
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Nov 25, 2016 20:00
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Mystic_Shadow posted:So let me get this straight. We've got global climate change leading to sea level rises affecting millions and desertification of settled regions affecting millions more; loss of freshwater and ocean acidification; soil degradation after decades of harmful agricultural practices; and large-scale destruction of rainforest habitats leading to extinction of thousands of species.... any other major ecological disasters I should be aware of? Donald J. Trump will become President of the United States on January 20th, 2017.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:04
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Huzanko posted:Donald J. Trump will become President of the United States on January 20th, 2017.  Hey if he annexes the rest of the world maybe we can finally have our world government that's needed to fight all this crap.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:06
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Mystic_Shadow posted:
Nah, the world will end faster since it'll be ruled by Christians who want to basically live out the Left Behind novels. Denialism is one part corporate greed and one part "The Second Coming is on it's way you guys! We need to end the world faster!"
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Nov 25, 2016 20:18
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Mystic_Shadow posted:So let me get this straight. We've got global climate change leading to sea level rises affecting millions and desertification of settled regions affecting millions more; loss of freshwater and ocean acidification; soil degradation after decades of harmful agricultural practices; and large-scale destruction of rainforest habitats leading to extinction of thousands of species.... any other major ecological disasters I should be aware of? Pine beetle populations that have exploded because of warmer winters and summers are killing billions of trees in North America worsening wildfires and destroying enormous areas of wildlife habitat. We're overfishing in the ocean, collapsing entire populations of fish and killing off all the apex predators in those ecosystems, as well as illegal bottom trawling wholesale destroying fish habitat and killing huge amounts of bycatch that is just thrown away. The permafrost is melting, releasing methane and heat as it begins decomposing causing a positive feedback loop melting more permafrost. Also a climate denying president has been elected into office of the most powerful nation on the planet who has an economic and ideological motivation to continue practices that accelerate climate change and shutter contradictory facts to those practices with whole-hearted support from his party. Wrenever fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Nov 25, 2016 |
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Nov 25, 2016 20:27
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Mystic_Shadow posted:So let me get this straight. We've got global climate change leading to sea level rises affecting millions and desertification of settled regions affecting millions more; loss of freshwater and ocean acidification; soil degradation after decades of harmful agricultural practices; and large-scale destruction of rainforest habitats leading to extinction of thousands of species.... any other major ecological disasters I should be aware of? Groundwater collapse and aquifer bankruptcy. Also bees are dying out. Give me a minute I'm sure there's more.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:28
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This is a heat map of the global fishing effort: You can view the current situation live over on Global Fishing Watch. However, this is a fraction of it. This mostly only displays ships with an AIS transceiver installed, so for example it'll count an offshore packing mothership but not the 600 small craft it deploys every day. It doesn't count some 40' dhow fishing illegally 2000 miles from home. We'll run out of the common edible fish within our lifetime, and stocks will not regenerate, because other nations will not and cannot force millions of uneducated subsistence fishermen to find another way of life. At a certain point you have to look at the long list of damage directly caused by humans, and wonder if a superplague or nuclear war isn't the only hope for everything not-human left on the planet.
Rime fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 25, 2016 |
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Nov 25, 2016 20:49
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Deadlysherpa posted:Some other things: Pah, this is the "what can be done about it" thread, climate despair thread is so last year. What can be done about this agricultural stuff in particular is voting to ban industrial meat production and unsustainable fish production. Rime posted:We'll run out of the common edible fish within our lifetime, and stocks will not regenerate because other nations will not and cannot force millions of uneducated subsistence fishermen to find another way of life. I think the uneducated subsistence fishermen are not the problem here.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:51
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TildeATH posted:Groundwater collapse and aquifer bankruptcy. Bees are not dying out.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:55
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Yeah bees are stable. The other issues are that there's a bunch of new and intriguing plant diseases cropping up due to terrible biosecurity, and also pesticides effectiveness is falling like a rock due to misuse leading to rapid immunity gains.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:09
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Clearly we should just be developing secure domed cities so that we can have our dystopian cyberpunk future without being interrupted by Earth trying to become Venus.
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Nov 25, 2016 21:12
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skull mask mcgee posted:Bees are not dying out. That's good. I assumed with all the resistance to banning neonics leading to the shittiest most toothless regulation that CCS was still a thing. There, there's some nice news!
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Nov 25, 2016 21:20
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Placid Marmot posted:Good news everyone Is there any even unreasonable way this could be fixed without making us unable to grow the amount of food we would need? How would those large indoor hydroponic setups that are springing up in certain places help to fix it?
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Nov 25, 2016 23:36
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RedneckwithGuns posted:Is there any even unreasonable way this could be fixed without making us unable to grow the amount of food we would need? How would those large indoor hydroponic setups that are springing up in certain places help to fix it? We have capacity for food production to feed much much more than we do now, it's just that it is at the cost of most meat, dairy products and tasty but nutritionally useless food items like cucumber. Basically cheap food has made some really wasteful food practices common, and one can cut through that pretty significantly before humanity starves (especially the rich part).
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Nov 26, 2016 00:04
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